Whether you're leaving Facebook for adept or simply curious virtually what data the social network has collected on y'all, yous might want to download your Facebook data.

The pick to download your Facebook data has existed since 2010, as Mark Zuckerberg made clear when he promised to fix Facebook subsequently the Senate hearings of Apr 2018.

And then allow'southward take a await at how to download your Facebook data, what's included, and, maybe most importantly, what'south non included.

How to Download Your Facebook Data and History

All Facebook users are able to request the data download via their Full general Business relationship Settings. Y'all can exercise this via your computer browser, mobile browser, the Facebook app, and fifty-fifty on Facebook Lite.

Since the file you're downloading is quite large, nosotros'll cover the method about users will opt for—sending the request via your desktop browser.

How to Request Your Data on the Facebook Website

Facebook download your data

To download your Facebook information using the Facebook website on your desktop browser, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to Facebook.com.
  2. Click on the downward arrow in the pinnacle-right corner and click Settings & Privacy > Settings, or head to Facebook.com/settings.
  3. Click Your Facebook Information.
  4. Become to Download Your Data and click on View.
  5. Select what data points to include by checking the appropriate box under Deselect All, or maintain the default settings.
  6. And so clickCreate File.
  7. Wait until your information is ready to download. You volition receive a notification when it's done.
  8. Click on the notification, review the file size, then clickDownload.
  9. Enter your Facebook countersign to confirm your identity, then wait for the download to complete.

The time information technology takes for Facebook to create a copy of your information will depend on just how much information you've selected to download.

When it does go far, your data will exist delivered in a Null archive.

Customizing Your Facebook Data Download

Facebook download your information

Facebook allows you to sort your downloads and to choose which information to download according to a variety of filters. These include:

  • Date range: Handy if you don't want to trawl through years of information to notice something.
  • Format: Choose betweenHTML (default) andJSON. If in doubt, get out it on HTML.
  • Media quality: College will hateful a larger download size, though this is still going to be worse than the quality of the original upload due to Facebook's ambitious compression.

Y'all tin also exclude sure items from the download. If you want a lean download and don't need your videos and photos, omit them by unchecking them, and watch your download size reduce significantly.

Exploring Your Downloaded Facebook Information

Once you lot've downloaded your Zilch file, extract it and you'll see a bones folder hierarchy that matches upwardly with the items you selected or deselected earlier. You lot're costless to trawl through these folders, just information technology's a lot easier to open index.html or index in the root folder.

Facebook data download folders

Yous can click on individual sections to see the information independent within them, in chronological social club. You can click your proper noun in the top-right corner if you want to head dorsum to the alphabetize.

Facebook data download photos pages

Other downloadable datasets include:

  • Ads Interests: Essentially topics that Facebook describes as "nearly relevant to you". This is worth a look since many of the categories probablydon't apply to you.
  • Advertisers who've uploaded a contact list with your information: Facebook describes these every bit advertisers who "run ads using a contact listing they've uploaded which includes contact info that y'all've shared with them or with one of their data partners".
  • Advertisers that you lot've interacted with: Only how advertising-savvy are you?
  • Messages: Including those you idea you'd deleted.
  • Friends: Including juicy categories likeRejected friend requests andRemoved friends you'd forgotten about.

What's Not Included in Downloaded Facebook Data?

Facebook doesn't give away everything it knows about you, just the things y'all've explicitly shared. There are some limited advertising flags, similar your broader interests and adverts you've interacted with; but these don't tell the whole story.

ProPublica identified over 52,000 unique "attributes" Facebook uses to classify its users. Most of these metrics do not appear in the Advertising Interests section of your Facebook download.

Facebook data download preferences ads

Instead, you'll need to discover the listing titled "Interest Categories" in the Advert Preferences department of your Facebook settings to see what Facebook thinks it knows almost yous. This is inferred data—descriptors used to categorize y'all based on all manner of interactions with Facebook services.

Other categories may seem oddly empty, depending on which permissions you have enabled and whether you let location tracking in the background, for example.

Facebook Data Locations and Calls History

The social network clearly knows more about y'all than it includes in the download, and users demand to be aware of this. We don't know what data Facebook collects based on our browsing history—which profiles nosotros visit and the groups nosotros are most active in.

It'll be interesting to see legislation evolve equally the authorities proceed to probe into Facebook'south handling of user information.

Downloading Other Facebook Photos and Videos

So what if you want to download a video or photo that you've been tagged in? Facebook does non include these in your data download, since they're non technically yours. There are plenty of legitimate reasons you might want to grab media from the site. Fair use laws protect your right to employ this content in many jurisdictions.

We've covered plenty of ways to download Facebook photos and videos.

FBDown Facebook Video Downloader

Downloading private Facebook videos is a niggling more difficult, since you'll need to grab the page source code and paste it into a specific individual video downloader. FBDown Private Video Downloader seems like the best bet in this case.

Is It Time to Delete Facebook?

Information technology'due south fair to say that Facebook has something of an image problem at the moment. However, despite massive data breaches and seemingly insidious ad practices, more people are using the service than ever earlier.

In that location are enough of reasons to stop using Facebook correct at present, but there are besides reasons to non delete your Facebook. So, the choice is yours. Notwithstanding, regardless of whether yous decide to dump Facebook, in that location's no reason not to at least download your information.

Image Credit: Christoph Scholz/Flickr

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